I know that to analyze a faction and all that with it just being released is wrong but since I got to play them while helping Q&A the patch, I feel I have a small grasp of understanding on the faction so I wanted to share my biased opinions.

Now let us begin by addressing the elephant in the room, with the announcement of SM, many felt they will be a brawler faction just like orks with CQC, ramming boarding etc etc

Well yes and no; atleast how I feel the devs implemented them, SM arnt copy pasta orks, rather SM focus more on 2 things: assault actions and crits, the former more than the latter, with less emphasis on brawling and ramming.

How I would describe the SM playstyle is precision striking a target with assault actions to cripple them, before closing in and finishing them off with your broadsides and armor piercing high crit bombardment cannons.

This is because of SM’s surgical strike attribute, assault actions consider enemies troop value at -10 of whatever their troop vlue is and SM have x4 the chance to destroy targeted subsystems instead of the normal x2

SM arnt brawlers per say, atleast not the light cruisers though you can brawl with strike cruisers and defiantly the battle barges (which are beastly even at a whopping 300+ pts). Yes they are survivable with 75 all around armor and access to voss shields but their firepower is more for fighting off targets till their weakened enough from assault actions to finish off, not brawling First off you have the vanguard light strike cruisers; it moves at 225 speed, with 3 variants based on their prow weapons, torpedo, lance and bombardment cannon; all variants are carriers

Because the bombardment cannon on the vanguard is a prow weapon instead of dorsal it can only turn 90 degrees instead of the normal 270, so it cannot help bolster your broadsides making the ship suffer from issues similar to that of the hades and murder, as such I suggest going torpedo vanguard ships to.

Because then you get to access my favorite upgrade in the entire SM upgrade list: homing boarding torpedoes with unlimited range

Which is indeed as awesome as it sounds, so along with their standard assault actions and assault actions for ordinance, SM can also shoot 4-8 boarding torpedoes that are fire and forget on auto cast will chase and hit a target across the map. I usually set it to always target weapons first to reduce the combat effectiveness of enemy ships

Between 4 vanguards that is 16 boarding torps and 12 boarding actions from ordinance for 28 potential assault actions It is also this upgrade that makes I feel the torpedo launcher escort very viable for SM

Then strike cruisers, you once again have 3 variants: carrier, torpedo and lance all with 270 bombardment cannons and 188 speeds

My advice to you, as it is right now, stay away from all lance variant SM ships, even the lance battlebarge, it is underwhelming compared to other variants. They are good for chasing but SM are already pretty fast

SM have no battlecruiser tonnage ships, instead you get access to 2 battleships at 6 and 8 respectively one variant has 3 bombarment cannons,torp launcher and launch bays and the other is a lance boat with some macros

I suggest the mark 1 battle barge both times; the 3 bombardment cannons are too good to pass up, the ships are very strong and fast for a BB but due to their cost, even in a 700 pt match you won’t be able to field more than it and 2 cruisers

SM’s favor are unique in the literal sense as in they are all 1 use favors meaning you can only use each favor on only 1 ship in your fleet and furthermore each favor unlocks a new crew slot which improves the effect of the favor based on allocated crew points, I suggest reserving these for your battle barges and strike cruisers

The first Favor is master of sanctity which makes you immune to assault actions for 30s with a 180 CD, crew points reduce CD by 15s at max crew pts lvl, its nice on brawlers

The second favor is chief librarian, which causes a ship to take an immunity check on any ship in 6k range. Each crew point reduces chance to succeed by 10 with additional pass chance reduction with each crew point, funny vs orks

Master of the forge is simple and straight forward, free upgrade slots. I like to use this on my battle barge to grab the voss shied combo of voss + shield regen inc and 100+ shield for even more surviveability

Chapter Master is perhaps the strongest favor in my eyes, it grants you two stance, the finest warrior increase your troop value while reducing the targeted enemies by another 10 troops on assault actions while the commander

Lock on buff is huge IMHO, at max points it increases acc by another 7 pts and crit chance by 37.5%, I also liked to put this favor on my battle barge

Well that’s the basics of it; some of the numbers might be wrong, but I want hear yall thoughts on the matter too

You will hear my thoughts... as soon as I get to see them. Thanks for describing the stuff though, it has me even more excited for when I get home. They sound like they will be interesting. I like the theme of surgical precision, it does sound very space marine-y.

The homing torpedoes gives me hope that they will do right by the tau as far as their torpedoes go.

I am glad to see that they aren't just using the same faction format for all the factions.

The best part about this though, is how well they will work with my Chaos in 2vAI and 2v2. Slaaneshi ships supporting space marine librarians just sounds sexy. I hope it will be as mean as eldar ambushers (I forget the name of that favor) paired up with my tzeentch ships.

I prefer to put only 1 Favour on a Battle Barge for a simple reason: You will seldom field two Battle Barges in one match, unless it is a 700 point one.

Therefor I would use Chapter Master on a Strike Cruiser, since it will probably see more action, outside of leveling the second Battle Barge of course.

Even though SMs excel at Boarding Actions, I would be careful when it comes to close range boarding.One crit on a prow weapon and your Strike Cruiser will lose 3 out of its 5 weapons, since someone thought that linking the prow weapons to the prow was a good idea

I play Orkz to collect all those salty Imperial tears #FeelsWaaaghBoss

Wanting to test out all three Vanguard variants, I've taken one of each. 2 things I concluded for this match: fuck you AI for taking an upgraded cruiser and light cruiser against my stock light cruisers, and ramming a Murder cruiser to death in a single constant spiral of death is effective

Wanting to test out all three Vanguard variants, I've taken one of each. 2 things I concluded for this match: fuck you AI for taking an upgraded cruiser and light cruiser against my stock light cruisers, and ramming a Murder cruiser to death in a single constant spiral of death is effective

You should have gone with heroic so you can deal with battlecruisers in 250 point games.

Clowater wrote:Cool, the previews suggested that there was a difference in their fighting style. Was wondering if it was a gameplay aspect or not.

Thanks for the information

You can tailor your ships according to the fighting style of the chapter. Ultramarines adhere very strictly to the code so they can be the most versatile of the chapters so it would mean fitting your ships to be adaptable to any situation. Space Wolves are ferocious and like to get in close but are cunning hunters, so I would fit my ships to reflect that demeanor.